News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-12-08
MORSE AND HIS TELEGRAPH.
The Instrument that Made His For
tune Preserved at A Museum.

A Washington letter says:-The Ma
tional Museum here has one of the frs
locomotives in the country, and 1 thinl
it has the one upon which Peter Cooper
acted as engineer. Here is the origina
Morse telegraph instrument, and it wa:
on this instrument that the first tele
graphic message in the world was sent
This line ran from Washington to Balti
more, and the first words were: "Wha
hath God wrought p Shortly after the
line was completed there was a pc
litical convention held at Baltimore
which nominated President and
President. The Vice-Presiden
tial candidate was at Washington,
and he was Silas Wright, then Uni
ted States Senator. He telegrapheC
declination of the nomination, but the
convention would not trust the tele
graph on such an important matter, and
they came to Washington to persua de
him to accept the second place on the
ticket with Polk. He refused, however,
and Dallas was nominated.
Morse eventually made a fortune out
of the telegraph, and in 1859 some OF
the foreign powers made him present
of $4,000. The King of Prussia gave
him a gold snuffbox, and he received q
present from the Sultan of Turkey of a
decoration, belonging to the court, OF
diamonds. Still, while his bill was be
fore Congress, he said one day that he
had enough money to pay his board and
get out of Washington if the bill did not
pass. It was passed the last day of the
Congress of 1913, and it gave him $780,
900 to build an experimental line be-
tween Washington and Baltimore. He
first tried to put the wire in a lead pipe
in the ground, but finally adopted the
pole system which is now in use.
To show how little the people then
knew ofthe telegraph, no less a man
than the Secretary of the Treasury
asked Mr.. Morse how large bundle
could be sent over the wires, and he
wanted to know whether it might not be
possible for the United States mail to be
carried by them A Congressman
telegraph Office in the Capital and
wanted them sent to Baltimore for wash.
ing. Dolly Madison sent message to
a friend of hers in Baltimore and the
telegraph was the great excitement of
the hour. Morse at this time offered
his whole right in the patent to the
Government for $1,000 and was, for
tunately for him laughed at and re-
fused.
1t was upon this that the Baltimore
and Ohio Telegraph Company, during
the time it was fighting the Western
Union, based its claim to be the oldest
telegraph company in the world in that
it held this line between Washington
and Baltimore upon which messages
were first sent Now the United States
has 164, 954 miles of telegraph wire in
stead of forty, and it surpasses the other
countries of the world in its Geographic
business. The whole world has more
than 100000 miles of telegraph lines, or
enough to put wire twenty-four times
around the whole world and have some
of miles to spare. China has
only 944 miles of wire, and when you
consider that its population is perhaps
six times that of the United States you
can see what immense opportunity is
open to such scheme as that of Whar-
ton Barker and Mitkiewicz. China has
just %. 100 mile of wire to every 1000
square miles of territory. Belgium, on
the other hand, which has perhaps the
most telegraph wire in proportion to its
territory, has one-half mile of wire to
each square mile of territory, and
France has one-third of mile of wire
10 each square mile of her area. In all
Europe there is not much more than
vice the amount of telegraph lines that
here are in the United States, and we
send about 70, 900, 900 messages year to
lalf that number of personsin Great Brit
lin. Japan is rapidly increasingas a tele-
graphic nation, and it sends more than
}, ZOO, 900 messages a year. It is its &C
ivity in this regard that has stirred up
China, and am told by travellers that
he enterprise of the japanese is having
great influence upon their Chinese
leighbors.